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Saturday, April 19, 2014

Nonfiction Writing

Steve Jenkins and Robin Page have published so many
beautifully, written nonfiction books together. To my surprise, when I visited
Steve’s website, I learned that they are married.

Every year, I enjoy sharing their books with my class you
can quickly tell a book illustrated by Steve because of his collage style.
Beautiful, unique and creative are the words that come to my mind when I look
at his illustrations. If you visit
his website he has a video demonstrating the process he goes through to make
his books. One of my students said, “Wow Mrs. Clancy it takes A LOT to make a
book.” His website is loaded with information about his work process, his
strong interest in science and where he gets his ideas. I think all of this is
so important for children to see and hear. Some kindergartener’s think books
just come from the bookstore.

During the month of March my students started writing
“Research/Informational ” books about animals. Students had to write about what
their animal looked liked, where their animal lived, what their animal ate and
any interesting facts. Of course one child in my class changed interesting
facts into FUN FACTS.

This year I
decided to have my students look closely at Steve’s books. Could we maybe find
something that he does in his books, that we could do in ours to make our books
even better? And also talk about WHY he makes these decisions as a writer. What
affect does it have on us a reader and writer?

This is called “Reading like a Writer”. Katie Wood Ray (an author who I admire)
has an amazing book called Wondrous Words that is all about this BIG
idea.

Learning from Steven and Robin

The first book I shared with my class was the book ActualSize. We began by looking at the cover and making predictions about what
this book could be about. A child immediately predicted that the hand on the
cover could be the actual size of an animal hand. As we looked over his book we
talked about what we noticed. There were lots of discoveries and amazing facts
learned.

On page 5 there’s a huge picture of anbears head, to
think an animal has a head this big!

The next day, during writing time, a child in my class
made a butterfly wing that covered the whole page she ZOOMED in on the scales
and pattern of the wing.

When I noticed this, I immediately asked the child to
share and as a class we gave Aila’s idea, a name. We called this ZOOMING in.

WOW, Aila, you did your picture just like Steven Jenkins (take
book out)…you zoomed in. This picture is really going to help the reader really
understand what a butterfly’s pattern looks like.

The next day, room 5 was reminded of Aila’s idea of
ZOOMING. Before sending students to tables, we took one last look at Aila’s
picture as a reminder. Students turned and talk to a partner about how they
might use the technique of ZOOMING in on an important part of the story. Mary
shared how she might ZOOM in on the pink tongue of her frog because that’s how
the frog eats. On that day half of
my class used the strategy of ZOOMING in and their illustrations were so unique
and beautiful. Although we did this lesson a few weeks ago, many students are
using this technique of ZOOMING.

On a different day we read my favorite book by Steven MOVE!
Right away students started shouting out, “The words are moving like the
animals.” “Yes you are right.” Why do you think he did that? “He wanted us to
really get the feeling of the way the animal moves.” One child called it
“Animal Action”

After reading MOVE we created some MOVING WORDS
that students could illustrate and write about. (click here to see my class
book)

On a different day, we took out our Animal Research books
and we added a moving sentence about
the animal. As a class we called this MOVING words. Why would we add moving
words? Adding actions to our words and animals always helps the reader get a
better understanding.

For the Moving Book on my class blog I used Simple Booklet you can join for free but they do have a teacher account I think it is for ten dollars a year...you can also download projects (PDF) and print them too!